Monday, May 27, 2013

Swans And Butterflies

It is a
late summer day. Outside my window, the wetland is dotted with blooming pink
flowers as large as saucers and lush shrubs and low-growing trees that have
adapted to the brackish water. Six-hundred feet away, under cloudless blue
skies, the waters of MecoxBay sparkle in azure.
Three dozen swans glide over the mirror-like surface, carving gentle wakes.
Half-way between the house and the bay, a fawn shows up on a deer path cut into
the phragmites. It stands still, brown eyes filled with wonder, the white spots
on its back like a sprinkle of freckles across a child’s nose. The fawn’s gaze
follows two large Monarch butterflies flying over its head, their large
orange-colored wings flapping in a balletic circle.

This could
be a scene from the Disney-animated movie Bambi, but it is real, and it is
mine. I catch the sight through almost every window of my otherwise modest
house.

Our life
changed when, in 1995 our four young-adult children ganged up on us and staged
a coup d’état. They had called one another from their respective colleges and
universities to gather in our Fire Island
home, where we had been spending summer weekends for seventeen years.

“Enough of Fire Island. Get a place in the Hamptons,” they announced.

“The Hamptons?” My husband,
Ron, vaulted over his ongoing tirade about getting dressed up Saturday night to
wait for an hour at one of the Hamptons’
notoriously crowded and expensive restaurants—only to be denied a decent meal.
“No way.”

“But you
love it here,” I reminded the children. They grew here, each held his or her
first job here, sometimes returning to it the following summer. Each became a
part of the fabric of life in Fire Island. We
all enjoyed the ferry ride with groceries across the bay, the insulation from
the world in the quiet, shaded lanes that only saw the wheels of wagons and bicycles.

But after
the coup d’état weekend ended, the warmth of our hours of laughter, shared
cooking, and games lingered. I sat Ron down for a talk. “Look how the children
make the effort to be together. It’s a gift that all four enjoy each other’s
company. Let’s spend their inheritance now—on them.”

He looked
past the sparse row of summer cottages toward the stretch of white sand lining
the ocean. “Only if we can stay close to the ocean.”

Summer
weekends on Fire Island had been an oasis from
my high-powered corporate career during an era when women broke the glass
ceiling—and cracking our skulls in the process. However, I had just left that
world to write fiction full time. I could settle anywhere. Yes, a view of the
ocean would be lovely for my new occupation, I agreed, but since we had
witnessed in Fire Island enough storms and houses tumbling into the water, we
should buy not right on the ocean, but across the street from it.

Finding
such a place in the Hamptons
turned out to be a daunting task. A home in walking distance to the beach?
Brokers showed us houses a mile away. We distilled our request: “Barefoot walk
to the beach.”

But a home
across the street from the ocean required an easement through ocean-front
properties, all private, thus further narrowing our options. “How about near a
public beach?” we asked.

Driving
around to look at available homes, I eyed MecoxBay
and became greedy. Iwanted water in the
back, too.

With this
added requirement, the offerings of both front and back water views were almost
nil, and the few houses we saw were suburban homes. We wanted a beach house;
our sprawling residence in NassauCounty with its
professional landscape required maintenance. We envisioned raw dunes dotted
with beach grass, reeds and wild roses—not another manicured lawn. We only
wanted to upgrade the house our Fire Island’s
beachy feeling, whose kitchen cabinets had been made of lumber the contractor
had slapped together.

Instead of
a house, we found a land on Dune
Road in Bridgehampton with a handkerchief-size
footprint permitted to build on the wetland. Yet merely “a barefoot walk” from
Cameron public beach, it faced the ocean from a safe distance in the front
while hugging the bay in the back. Most enticing, the two bodies of water met right
past us, creating yet another water front and giving the house-to-be stunning
330-degree water views.

Building it
took only a season. The first night we slept there, with the windows
opened,we listened to the concert
produced by fowls and insects in the marshes. A surround sound symphony of
cracks, tweets, buzzes, squeals and pitched cries filled the night, competing
with the syncopated roar of breaking ocean waves. The music magnified and
traveled over the still waters of MecoxBay. Our bedroom felt
like a boat moored in the middle of nature, unencumbered by human noise, amidst
nothing but land, and sea, and undisturbed fauna and flora.

What we had
never considered when first giving in to our children’s request was that this
weekend abode would soon become our main residence.

It started
two days after we had settled in. One morning, a couple knocked on our door and
presented us with a pie! They introduced themselves as “neighbors” although
they lived a mile away around the bend. By noon, the neighbors across the
street invited us for lunch at their house. The following week, another couple
down the street hosted a dinner in our honor and introduced us to their local
friends. Another neighbor threw a lavish party and invited everyone on the street
to celebrate summer.

In our many
years on Fire Island, our social life
consisted entirely of our friends from the mainland taking the ferry over.
Unlike some families that moved in full-time in summer and whose young children
attended camp there, Ron and I worked at our respective jobs all week while our
children—often the conduit to parents’ socializing with other parents—were at
day camps on the mainland and later at sleep-away camps. In seventeen years,
we’d never made new local friends.

Yet here,
in the first Hamptons
summer, our circle of acquaintances and new friends expanded fast. After a
lecture at Guild Hall, a woman turned to me and asked what I thought about the
topic. As we walked up the aisle with our husbands in tow, we all decided to go
out for coffee…. When I stumbled over a store’s threshold into the arms of a
mother-daughter duo, they invited Ron and me for a party at their home. During
the Film Festival, while buying an extra pair of tickets from a couple, we were
literally “picked up,” when they asked us to join them for dinner.

In
subsequent years, at a phase when grown children drift away, our beach house
became their weekend gathering place, keeping them in our life. We biked and
kayaked and swam as a group. We cooked together one main meal each day, freeing
us to make social plans for another meal—except that our children often chose
one another. One by one, they married, yet their friendships deepened to
include new spouses.

A few times
a year, a huge bulldozer dredges up sand to create a wide tunnel that drains
the overflow of MecoxBay into the ocean.
Within days, natural pools are formed, warmed by the sun. After babies began to
arrive in our family—and all too soon turned into toddlers and beyond—they
loved to pull a wagon to “the cut,” splash in the shallow water, build sand
castles, or catch crabs with a net at the end of a pole. Often, playmates’
parents now park their cars in our driveway to take advantage of our proximity
to this children’s haven. Yet again, our beach house has extended our years
with our family, keeping a second generation offspring close.

As an
antidote to the hectic weekends come the quieter midweek days. We had long sold
our NassauCounty home and bought an apartment in
the city for winter. Now we move in to the beach from spring to fall, I with my
computer, Ron with his golf clubs. I’ve signed up at two local gyms, procured a
library card, joined a Mah-Jongg game, and opened an account at the Sag Harbor pharmacy. We now dance to the drummers at
Sagg-Main beach and attend services at the Jewish center.

As I watch
the dawn activity on the sand bar in “the cut,” where flocks of birds of dozens
of species vie for a footing and nesting, I observe a few SUVs pulling onto the
beach, their drivers seeking what I am fortunate to wake up to. I take my coffee
thermos, don a life vest, and hoist my kayak into MecoxBay.
As I paddle into the midst of nature, the pink in the east changes to gold, the
crisp air welcomes me, as do the swans.

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About Me

Talia Carner is formerly the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine and a lecturer at international women’s economic forums. The award-winning author of heart-wrenching suspense novels will soon welcome her new novel, HOTEL MOSCOW, (summer 2015, HarperCollins,) that will follow her previous successful novels, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, CHINA DOLL and PUPPET CHILD, all hailed for exposing society’s ills.